Industrial image processing (IBV) is entering more and more areas of automation. The transfer of the results of the image evaluation to the given control technology, usually in the form of a PLC together with a fieldbus or industrial Ethernet solution, is essential for the automation engineer. Only the fast, perhaps even synchronous coupling of the image processing with the PLC, the controller and/or the actuators of the process brings the significant advantage, so that manual or semi-automatic procedures can be replaced and a person on site is no longer constantly needed.

The FieldboxCAM system offers a construction kit for image processing with parallel fieldbus connection. It consists of a Mini-PC, the Spectra PowerBox 100 with the real-time image processing library SIMD and the GigE-Vision Stack from Sybera and an industrial camera. The great advantage of the FieldboxCAM system, and the main difference to most traditional smart cameras, is its flexible integration into existing control technology.

By using the optional four isolated digital inputs/outputs of the Spectra PowerBox 100, simple "OK"/"not OK" results of the image evaluation can already be forwarded directly as a physical signal to higher-level PLCs, controllers or directly to actuators.
 

It is also easy to use as a subordinate PROFINET slave with transmission of the image results to a master PLC, including the associated GSDML or ESI configuration file.
 

When the master stack for the desired fieldbus or real-time Ethernet protocol is activated, the system itself becomes the fieldbus master that controls everything, thus combining image processing and fieldbus control technology in a compact housing. The size of the embedded system no longer has anything in common with the classic idea of a 4U rack IPC with frame grabber cards. Instead, the dimensions of the fanless Spectra PowerBox 100, measuring just 150 x 53 x 105 mm, are close to the requirements of Embedded Vision and are ideally suited for applications close to the machine. With these specific features, the FieldboxCAM camera system is recommended for many machine vision applications.